John Virdin is Director of the Ocean Policy program at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and has worked on international ocean policy issues in over twenty countries throughout the tropics. This work has focused largely on fisheries, spending over a decade at the World Bank to develop programs that provided more than $125 million in funding for improved fisheries management in six West African nations and some $40 million for fisheries and ocean conservation throughout the Pacific Islands region.  He continues to work on tuna fisheries in the high seas and in national waters, as part of an international consortium aiming to advise governments in the Pacific Islands region on innovative policy instruments.